Guide dog pups: free to a good home

They're the cute fur-balls you fall in love with them every time you see a toilet paper ad on television and they grow up to provide one of the most essential services for the vision-impaired, but not without your help.

Each year in Queensland between 60 to 80 fully trained labradors and golden retrievers are sent to vision impaired clients of Guide Dogs Queensland who've made the life changing decision to be more independent, but the organisation says there are not enough puppy raisers to keep up with the growing demand.

"[Demand] is climbing all the time with higher risk age groups, with the baby bomber age group we're getting age related eye disease effecting people's vision. So our client list is climbing all the time," says Breeding & Dog Supply Manager Lauren Elgie.

"We could easily get twenty dogs out there tomorrow if we had all of the resources we need to get them out into the community; we're trying to meet that demand each year and the client list keeps growing," she says.

The organisation is currently looking for 12 homes to raise 12 week old puppies in the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and Gold Coast area.

"It's 10-12 months of taking the puppy into your home and making it part of your family; we do need them to have some flexibility to incorporate a guide dog puppy into their life; and [they need] some time on their hands to dedicate to the puppy," she says.

According to Ms Elgie it's important that clients of GDQ are not waiting too long for a guide dog, hence the need to find homes for the new puppies once they reach about 10 weeks old.

"Once [our client] has made that decision to develop their independence and become more mobile we really want to help them do that as soon as possible."

Helen Croucher of Currumbin is about to hand back Volcan, the 5th guide dog puppy she has raised through the organisation.

"It's one of the best things that we've done, it's an amazing experience, and they're the most beautiful dogs.

"We do become attached, but if you can see the end result of a guide dog which is the companionship that dog gives to a vision impaired person.

"We thought gosh, we've played a very small part, and that is an amazing experience and thats why we do it," she says.

Helen says the commitment of raising a guide dog is not to be taken lightly, but if you have time to spend with the dog, love is all you need.

"We retired, and we had a little bit of time to devote to the dogs, but we were concerned initially because we had no dog experience.

"But we get instructed to do basic training, and we get full support. It's not rocket science, it's not difficult and once it's explained it's very easy to follow the instructions from Guide Dogs Queensland."

"You meet new people that are also puppy-raising and the social side of that is great. It's opened us up to a new world," Helen says.

The puppies trained in south-east Queensland supply the demand for guide dogs across Queensland.